Batman v. Superman had a huge opening weekend, but from what I've read, it suffered an astonishing 81% decline during its second weekend.

Good. Maybe someone will learn a valuable lesson.

Was Batman v. Superman the worst movie I've ever seen? No, not by a long shot.

Was it the worst piece of character assassination of beloved, iconic characters that I've ever seen? Yeah, pretty much.

Nobody in the movie acted like the characters as we've come to know and love them -- except, perhaps, Wonder Woman and Alfred Pennyworth. Certainly not Superman, certainly not Batman, definitely not Lex Luthor. Even Perry White has undergone a drastic personality (and morality) change from the character we've come to know and love throughout the decades.

Batman v. Superman certainly could have been a good movie. But this convoluted mess, whatever else it was, was not a good movie. In my opinion, before he's allowed to touch another DC property, Zach Snyder should be forced to sit down and read -- and demonstrate that he understands -- a few key works. We'll start with All-Star Superman, especially this scene, where Superman confronts a girl who's about to commit suicide:*

Oh, and keep Snyder away from anything written by Frank Miller. Except for Batman: Year One, perhaps.

*This particular scene has often been voted the best scene in comics -- ever -- because it so succinctly demonstrates who Superman is and what he stands for. Personally, I think it would have worked even better without dialogue. What Regan really needed wasn't platitudes about how "she's stronger than she thinks;" what she really needed was for someone to hold her and reassure her that she is loved and cherished. And that is what Superman is all about.

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“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”

I have a sinking feeling that when Superman does indeed return to life, he isn't going to be on the side of the angels.

Why do I say this? Well, aside from the fact that Zack Snyder and Warner Bros. clearly hate everything the Superman character stands for and will go to extraordinary lengths to make sure that no purely heroic version of the character will appear on screen in any of these films, there's also a comic book tradition of Superman turning evil (even temporarily), and this Flash moment, coupled with the impending arrival of Darkseid, seems to nod to at least two of them.

Given this superman has killed thousands and let children die are we sure he isnt already evil?
Although never underestimate Snyder being a hack who calls anyone who disagrees with him not true fans unlike himself. So its quite possible we're seeing some self insert fan fic on the big screen. Snyderman vs batzack makes way more sense.

Just wanted you all to know that the only reason I'm gonna see it is to participate in this thread

You guys, I think I'm gonna read your poasts about BvS. At first, I avoided it because I didn't want to taint my opinion of the movie before I watch it. But, I don't think I'm gonna actually watch it...or at least I don't know when I'll watch it.

I really don't want to see this movie, but I really really want to read your posts.

I've been trying to get a time to take my Mom to see BvS for two weeks without success. We were supposed to go last Monday, but she forgot and made plans to meet my aunt for lunch. Then I tried to get out of my union meeting in time to take her yesterday, but it was too late and I was beat. I finally confessed to her that it's been getting really bad reviews. I've been torn between wanting the experience of taking my mom to a superhero movie and not really wanting to make her watch it. Sparing her the film finally won out, helped by my busy schedule.

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"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette

Yeah so I think I'm done with Arrow.
(Actual season spoilers ahead if anyone still cares).

So after another long drawn out, destroy the city to destroy Ollie plot that they do every season the one mystery they had going, who was in the grave, has been revealed and it turns out to be... Black Canary, because killing the Lance sisters fits with their theme of repeating season 1 over and over again. It's extra sad when killing off one of the better characters in the show, (can't let Arrow be interesting) has been met with a resounding meh by me. The show creators have said this death will be permanent, and just incase you think the team is creative, this death was meant to 'shake things up' for ratings. I'm glad we got Flash out of this before the show lept off the cliffs of Lamen u.

Considering Legends of Tomorrow has been hit or miss as well and he's part of that production but not The Flash I'm going to blame Marc Guggenheim for Arrow's downfall. His previous credits include the hated Green Lantern movie and the sequel to the much panned Percy Jackson.

I caught that news. People are not happy about that. Even though I stopped watching I'm mad about it too. Mostly because it flies in the face of canon - not that this show particularly cared about that anyway. I'm also mad because that character was never as good as that character should have been, and now never can be.

I'm not that angry about it. It's certainly not as bad as the death on Sleepy Hollow this week. We knew someone had to be in that grave and it had to be someone who mattered to the cast and the fans. And while the character had been much better this year, she was poorly served by the first two seasons and had a lot to overcome with viewers.

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"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette

Honestly, I thought the entire Canary character -- via both sisters -- was poorly realized. The original Canary was more believable from an abilities perspective, but she still looked ridiculous (especially with a blonde character using a blonde wig as a disguise, I mean, WTF). Then Laurel took over, with a crash course in martial arts over something like, what, weeks? Even worse. And it didn't help that Laurel's personality kept seesawing all over the place as a result of the writers needing to provide constant twists and turns to the story. Said twists and turns being essentially the same pivots, back and forth, for 4 fucking years.

Not to mention the overuse of magical elements this season. One could debate whether there was a particular shark-jumping moment that kicked it off, but I see this entire season as a hurdle-race of fairly consistent shark jumps. I find myself looking back wistfully at the uneven 3rd season, since even with its silliness it was a lot easier to swallow than this Damien Darkh/voodoo McGuffin bullshit.

Agreed. I should say that I think they were finally getting a handle on Canary when they decided to scrap all their work for shock value that just led to yawns. Laurel becoming the Canary was pretty unbelievable and really highlighted Arrow being a superhero show where the characters have protagonist shields. She should have been shot dead right at the start, at least Ollie and Sara had paper thin 'trained assassin' excuses for not being turned into pin cushions.
Now the part that annoys me,

In an interview one of the creators has said we may still see the Black Canary again, just with a different person 'taking up the mantel' so yes, not only might they half walk back on this because the reset button is just so damn interesting, they've forgotten there are more than 4 characters in the DCU. It's this type of let's do something different, but not too different, inside the box thinking that's hurting both Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow.

I think this season is much better than the last. At least Damien Darkh has a consistent personality and motivation. R'as al Ghul was all over the place doing shit that flat out made no sense all last season. It was such a waste of a good comics character.

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"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette

Stephen Attewell has more on why Batman v. Superman was such a disaster, and has what at first appears to be a bold stance, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense to me: Screenwriter David S. Goyer doesn’t get superheroes either. Not only does he fundamentally misunderstand Batman and Superman, but he also completely fails to understand Captain America (anyone who thinks Cap is at all conservative in any possible way is a complete frakking idiot, at least when it comes to politics) and several other major superheroes.

Sure, Goyer has written or co-written a lot of the most successful screen adaptations of superheroes in the last several decades, but a lot of these seem to have been successful in spite of his screenwriting rather than because of it. To name one obvious example: The Dark Knight. The Joker’s plans make little sense, particularly coming from a character who is supposed to be as intelligent as the Joker is supposed to be. The reason the film worked so well seems to have been because of Ledger’s performance and Nolan’s direction; the screenwriting was kind of all over the place.

As usual for LGM, the comments are very, very good. Here, via the comments, are two pages from Warren Ellis & John Cassady’s Planetary/Batman: Night on Earth that sum up what Batman’s character is fundamentally supposed to represent:

And here, not via the comments (well, until I posted it) but because I couldn’t resist including it, is the most famous scene from Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely’s All-Star Superman, which is of course the single best summation of Superman’s character that I have ever seen:

I have never seen these characters on the big screen. Ever. I’ll give some of the earlier adapters credit for trying to bring them to screen (Bryan Singer certainly tried), but no one has come close to matching them.

What’s sad is that the story Goyer and Snyder appear to have been trying to tell could have actually been fairly interesting if they had had the courage of their convictions and followed it through to its logical conclusions: namely, a world with superheroes could run the risk of being run by complete sociopaths. As an anarchist, I certainly sympathise with the view that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, so a vigilante with as much power as Superman or Batman have would very quickly run the risk of becoming a complete tyrant in a truly realistic superhero setting. But it sounds like we’re supposed to start rooting for the superheroes towards the last few minutes of the film, so they wimp out on what could have been an interesting premise.

But, in any case, it would have been an interesting premise for a story about some other characters. Those characters are not Superman and Batman. They can, at best, be described as “Superman” and “Batman”. The real Superman and Batman, by all accounts, do not appear in this film. Superman and Batman have yet to appear anywhere in any of DC’s recent cinematic adaptations. They would be quite welcome were they to suddenly appear, but as long as Goyer and Snyder are given as much power over the setting as they have, I do not expect this to happen.

Sadly, Goyer is behind the planned adaptation of The Sandman, but original planned actor/director Joseph Gordon-Levitt has dropped out of the project so maybe we won’t end up being cursed with it. On the plus side, Gaiman seems to be heavily involved in a planned adaptation of Good Omens, so maybe that won’t suck.

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“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” -Adam Smith

“If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Tsar himself.” -Mikhail Bakunin

I saw that earlier today and wanted to post about it, but I wasn't braining on all cylinders. I don't know how I overlooked it - maybe it was because I was too focused on not liking Snyder's direction - but I didn't key in on Goyer writing the scripts for Man of Steel and BvS. Now there are some characters I think he could write well. Rorschach for one was pretty note perfect from the source material. Too bad that people walked out of that movie thinking there were definite heroes and villains, though. And though Atwell wasn't a fan of Blade's script(s), I thought at least the first one was pretty well done. But he certainly doesn't get decent comic book heroes. Definitely not Superman and that goes double for Captain America.

In the comments there I was horrified to learn that he's the guy working on the Sandman adaptation. So much for that being enjoyable.

It takes a lot of time to trawl the comments on an active LGM post. And even after the first day, there can be a lot more in the days following. Today scrolling from the bottom up, this comment is very succinct in what's wrong with Snyder/Goyer "Superman". Inasmuch as theirs doesn't resemble the canon one. But now after two movies I have to resign myself to think that they're building towards a Justice Lord or Ultraman universe.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sly

“Superman reluctantly kills Zod and is immediately horrified by it” works if his primary role model in life wasn’t the kind of guy who told him it might not be a bad idea if he let a busload of kids drown in a lake.

The reason why Superman is a goody two-shoes isn’t because he’s an alien with some innate superior morality that is challenged by the apathy and corruption of the mundane masses. It’s because he grew up in Wholesome Heartland Goodness America. Being from Krypton doesn’t make him a superhero; being raised by Jonathan and Martha Kent does. And because Jonathan and Martha Kent are assholes in Man of Steel, we get broody conflicted Superman.

As a fan of the original Harley Quinn, Ive been worried that the slow but constant sexualization of the character was going to turn her into a shell of her former complex and interesting self. The most recent suicide squad trailer has me feeling a bit better. While a new version of Harley, I think she may just steal the show.

I liked that trailer. It didn't include the scene that bugged me about the last one, Deadshot firing a stream of bullets with shell casings bouncing all around him. Hey, Suicide Squad director, Deadshot doesn't spray bullets and doesn't have to waste them. The clue is in the name.

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"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette

I'm a fan of the Squad from the Ostrander days, so I probably have a bit of "get offa my lawn" syndrome going on here, but I've seen nothing to make me think that these writers have any better handle on the characters than Goyer. Of course, we've not seen anything in the trailer to indicate what the characters are like or even what is the plot.

That could be a good thing, I hate trailers that give away everything.

Still, I don't like that trailer...or the ones before it.

Setting aside the desperate attempt to echo Guardians of the Galaxy, the whole thing rings false. The editing seems to force scenes together to create "humor", different scenes are cut to create the setup and deliver the punchline.

With two quite good episodes back to back, it's pretty clear Legends of Tomorrow does so much better when they ignore Vandal Savage. Unfortunately the end of the most recent episode outright stated the next episode was going to be Savage centric, hopefully he goes away soon. I'm also so tired of Kendra's destiny to fall for douchey mc Doucherson Carter. It's gotten sad, like oh you can't love anyone else because you are destined to be with a paper thin, hallow personality, one note ass who sounds like every shallow new age woo creeper dude I've met.

I also think they totally got their big bads mixed up in Legends and Arrow. Legends should be chasing a magical warlock with super powers and Arrow should be fighting the immortal with the super power of bad acting.

I'm tired of Kendra, but I had a revelation this week. Ray Palmer is a Ralph Bellamy/Gig Young character. The handsome, wholesome guy with all the good qualities who nevertheless always loses the girl to the leading man. It instantly made Ray work for me in a way the character hadn't before. It also left me wondering why I couldn't name a more contemporary actor who plays that role. Do they not do that in romcoms anymore?

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"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette

Reading a recent review they made a point that I hadn't quite articulated yet but is part of what bugs me about how Kendra is written. She's the only main character that is defined solely through her connection to men. Even the psychically linked duo and team HotnCold has had more individual characterization than Kendra.

Well that was interesting, Flash gets to meet his deity. While quite a bit similar to DS9, which isn't a bad thing, the speed force seems to have general interests and goals. At least one of those things seems to be the willing sacrifice of Flash's Mom. Which for all the loving moments from the Speed Force it looks as if future flash waved off current Flash when fighting reverse flash because the speed force needs her to die. Also interesting was what the speed force didn't say. No real mention of Zoom or of artificially enhancing the speed force. Almost as if artificial means just bump people up into it's real where it happily enjoys visitors, whatever they do with their powers.

I'm tacitly hopeful. I think Supergirl can be a better fit on that channel. I'm also concerned that they'll try to reboot, retcon, or whatever so that she's in the CWverse. The further it stays away from Arrow the better. Though I can't deny wanting to see her dope-slap Ollie.

As for this week's Flash. I enjoyed it greatly. It's always a treat to see Jesse show some range and he got to do a little of that as the Speedforce. I don't know if the Speedforce has ever been personified before, or if it even has what we would recognize as a consciousness.

I think we're getting the ol' switcheroo pulled on us between Wally and Jesse. But then, Berlanti has been known to play fast and loose with "canon." So, we'll see who ends up having speed powers. Heck, maybe both?

In other other news: Wentworth Miller is sort of leaving Legends. Though Captain Cold isn't gone forever. He'll be showing up in both Flash and Legends for the time being.

So Legends just flipped everything upside down, but damnit we're still stuck with the Hawk twins for the time being.

In their season finale we find out not long after Savage conquers the world an alien race attacks and only through Savage do we defeat them. Along with that the second boot drops and we learn why "Time wants to happen" as the time council has a magic device that allows them to modify time and everything Rip has done was engineered to put Savage in power. Learning this of course our heros blow it up, with a noble sacrifice required which the Atom takes, only to be knocked out by Mick, who is then knocked out by Snart. Thus 'dying' in an explosion of something able to modify the time stream is his exit as a show regular.

Its interesting that the arrowverse earth eventually faces alien invasion and an alien has recently made friends with the flash and is also now on the same network...